


Ties of Blood

by Sharinarra



Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Horror, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Gen, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-02
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-08-19 02:56:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8186732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharinarra/pseuds/Sharinarra





	

Once, long ago, there lived a Queen, wise and beautiful.   
She ruled her land with care and devotion, holding a deep love for the realm whose charge had been placed in her hands by the death of her husband. And she also sought, as best she could, to fill the empty hole left in her young step-daughters heart by his passing. For a time, the young Princess and the loving Queen, united in their grief, were as close as any could have wished them to be.

 

Years passed, and the rigors of leadership bore heavily on the Queens shoulders. With a war between their neighbors on the southern border, a strong chieftain uniting the disparate and warlike clans of the northern steppes, and trolls and goblins causing trouble in the eastern forests, only the inhospitable mountains of the west showed any sign of peace. The Queen, therefore, was obliged to spend ever more time away from her step-daughter, in the council chambers, working minor miracles of diplomacy and military command to protect the people of her kingdom.   
The Princess, now a budding beauty of thirteen, was at first accepting of the demands on her step-mothers time. But she grew resentful and jealous, and began to spend ever more time exploring the confines of the palace grounds that were her world, seeking something she could not name, knowing only that the love and comfort of her step-mother had been taken from her. She explored guest rooms, servants passageways, attics, cellars, and every pathway and gap in the sculpted hedgerows of the gardens that she could find, frequently returning to the dismayed and bustling ministrations of her maids covered in dust, mud, and leaves.

 

Time marched on.  
The kingdom's problems worsened, as the war to the south dragged on, and the clans of the north began to raid.  
Now, the Queen was barely able to spend any time with the Princess at all, finding their interactions limited by the pressures of her rule to a shared and frequently hasty breakfast and supper.

One day, as she neared her sixteenth birthday, the Princess found a rotting door set into a crumbling archway in the old outer wall - long since rendered pointless by a larger wall as the old castle expanded into the dignified palace that it was at this time. The door was hidden by ivy, and long forgotten. With nowhere to be, and feeling as much forgotten and neglected as the overgrowth and masonry around her, the Princess lifted away the rusted iron chains and bars that had, in the distant past, barred the door, and pushed the door open, setting her shoulder to the jam as the ancient hinges protested this treatment.   
Beyond, as a wave of musty and fetid air washed over her, she saw a stone staircase leading down, and realised that she must now be on the back of the royal cemetery, which had been established between the old outer wall and the new one shortly after the expansion. Curious now, as she hadn’t seen any signs of a mausoleum near the back wall during her past explorations of the cemetery, the Princess stepped over the threshold, and began the winding descent down into the ancient bowels of the palace grounds. 

Slime coated the walls. Moss and fungus grew in every crack in the masonry. And as she went deeper, the fungus began to glow, faintly illuminating the narrow stairs in a pale and sickly light.   
At the bottom, the stairs opened out to a large tomb, lined with stone sarcophagi topped by effigies of ancestors past. Effigies that all held heavy silver crosses in their hands, and whose limbs appeared to have been designed in such a way that heavy silver chains ran from solid fixtures in the stone, down to deep anchoring points on the floor.  
At the far end of the chamber stood a stone plinth, upon which rested a silver casket, edged in gold, with a heavy crystal lid. 

Cautiously, wondering at the strange burial rites of her ancestors, the Princess moved forwards, too curious about the crystal roofed casket to heed her own misgivings and leave. 

Reaching the plinth, she moved up the steps, and brushed away the dust of ages from the lid. Peering through the thick crystal, she could just make out the figure of a woman, richly dressed, with a gem-studded circlet of gold upon her brow, and clearly preserved well beyond the poor skills of the embalmers who had prepared the King for burial. Standing on tiptoe and resting her hand on the casket lid to balance herself, the Princess leaned further over, hoping to get a better glimpse of this long dead Queen. Her hand slipped slightly on the crystal, and caught on a silver cross embedded in the center of the lid, cutting her thumb and leaving drops of blood caught in the crack between crystal and cross, black as ebony in the pale light of the fungi. Slowly, unseen and unheeded by the Princess, those drops of blood seeped through the tiny gap, and landed on the folded hands of the corpse within.

Suddenly, the corpse’s eyes flew open, gleaming red in the gloom, and the Princess found herself frozen in place, staring into those terrible eyes, her mind screaming in terror while her body failed to make a sound.   
“Child…” a sibilant voice whispered in her head, faint and hollow. “Child of my children.... Blood of my blood… at lasssssttt.”   
The Princess tried desperately to push back, but couldn’t. She stood there. Aching to move. To flee. Until, against her will, she found her body moving of its own accord. Unlocking the clasps on the casket. Prising out the heavy silver cross from the lid.  
A pale and withered arm reached up, and the crystal lid tumbled away. The Princess once more found herself leaning over the casket, as that dreadful voice whispered in her head.  
“Come to me, child... Embrace the mother of your line... I have been so very lonely here in my prison…” A sound like that of sobbing echoed throughout the chamber, and the Princess saw a blood streaked tear run down the ancients face, as a wave of sorrow and loneliness that echoed her own washed over her.  
And all thought fled, save the urge to serve and comfort this, her beautiful mother.  
She reached into the casket and lifted the frail seeming body up as far as her now revealed silver chains would allow, and held it close.  
Emaciated arms snaked around her, and teeth sank into her neck. 

 

Hours later the Princess awoke, lying on the cold floor of the tomb. The silver all around itched at her, and the light put out by the fungi seemed to have gotten as bright as day.  
Above her, still chained to the casket, her ancient mother, regal and young.   
“Welcome back, my dearest daughter. I have little time left now that I am freed from the curse that confined me, all unknowing, for many centuries, while too much of my vitality was leeched by this accursed silver.  
My sons and daughters lie here also. Long since murdered. But they could not kill me so easily, leaving their clever little trap to do their dirty work for them.”

The Princess rose unsteadily to her feet, noting absently that her skin seemed deathly white, and her nails harder. Sharper.  
She looked upon the ancient one, and felt no fear, nor even any curiosity, but instead, a strange acceptance.  
“Mother. What would you have me do?”

The ancient one smiled.   
“You must feast on all that is left of me. You will inherit the strength of the Mother, and you will return my kingdom to the rule of the ever-dying. Take back my throne and chattel. Rule in blood and power, as is our right.”

The Princess smiled, seeing in her minds eye the memories of her maker, the fearful populace, the proud nobility of blood-drinkers. A reign of terror and death.   
And somewhere deep inside, in that formerly empty place of longing, she found it pleasing.

 

In the council chambers, in the heart of the palace, there is an ornate mirrored table. A wedding gift to her husband, the Queen had commissioned it from the greatest magician in her father’s kingdom. Within this mirrored surface, she could - as her husband had before her - call up images of her kingdom, and have it reveal threats to her rule and her people.   
It was the use of this table that had allowed her to anticipate and block many of her enemies plans.   
And at the end of each day, she would ask it the same question:  
“Mirror, Mirror   
Beneath my hand,  
What danger is greatest  
To my land?”

 

On this day, she saw no rampaging trolls, or enemy raiders. Instead, she saw a horror.   
In a stone tomb, a woman with skin as white as snow held an emaciated corpse in her arms, as she sucked the last drop of blood from its neck. Dropping the corpse, the woman stood, and brushed back hair as black as ebony, to reveal lips as blood-red as a rose, and eyes that gleamed with an inner fire.  
And the Queen knew both fear, and heartbreak. For she knew, in her heart of hearts, that the Princess she had loved was no more, and in her place stood a monster out of the darkest past.

Weeping, the Queen sent for the Hunstman, the strongest and most skilled of her elite guards. He had spent his life, both as a youth and as a guard, searching out and hunting down every troll, goblin, and any other monster that had come to his attention.

 

In the dead of night, the Princess left the tomb of her forebears, and stepped out into the underbrush. From behind a tree, the Hunstman watched, silver tipped arrow nocked in his bow, awaiting a clear shot.   
And then she called his name, softly, as if part of the gentle night breezes. His bow fell to the ground, forgotten, as he sank to his knees before her. His mind empty of all but the desire to please her.   
“Who sent you to kill me?”  
“The Queen, for she fears you.”  
“And what token asked she to be brought in proof of my death? For to take my body before her would cause rebellion and civil war amongst all of our subjects.”  
“Your heart, my lady, as both proof and surety.”

The Princess's eyes narrowed as she bent her will upon the undefended mind of her new servant.  
“Listen well. A heart she has asked for, and a heart she shall have. I have need of time to settle into myself. Time for my power to grow. You will buy me that time. Seek out a peasant who will not be missed, and take their heart to she who wears my crown.  
You will forget this conversation, and you will believe, utterly, that you have completed your mission faithfully. And when next you enter the eastern forests, you will allow the trolls to kill you.”  
“Yes, my most revered Mistress.”  
“Go.”

 

The Princess was mourned in an empty-casket state funeral, after a tragic accident buried her in a landslide that was too unstable to move.  
The Queen secretly burned the heart, and ruled her kingdom with the same devotion as before, but with none of the joy.

 

Meanwhile, out beyond the eastern forests, far past the borders of the kingdom, seven miners found themselves taking in a lost young woman, hunted by her evil step-mother, and hiding her from the world.   
The Princess grew in strength and power, and because she had no immediate aims at the kingdom, the mirror table did not report her presence to the Queen as the greatest danger to the land until the day, some five years later, when the Princess’s thoughts and plans turned once more to conquest.

Shocked and horrified beyond measure, the Queen delved into every record of the ancient blood-drinkers reign that she could find, and in one faded, nearly illegible diary of a monk, she found an answer.   
Mages were bribed. Clerics consulted. And the trap was laid.

The Princess answered the door one evening, while her miners were working for the gold and jewels she desired to adorn her, to find an old woman from a long since dominated nearby village seeking to make a gift to the glory of the mistress.   
Held forth in the old womans palm was a golden apple, embedded with slivers of rubies, gleaned from the workbenches of the village gem cutter who worked the gems that the Princess’s miners dug up.

Accepting the apple as her rightful due, the Princess held it up to the light, and found herself locked in place, mesmerised by the light playing in the rubies. Unaware that the most subtle of hypnotic curses had been laid upon the apple, she did not notice as the old woman stepped forward, and anointed her lips with a vial of black, sticky unguent. 

Hearing the sound of footsteps approaching, the Queen fled, leaving the deeply ensorcelled miners to discover their beloved mistress lying in a deathly sleep.   
Weeping, they sought to protect her, against the day that their Lady awoke, and fashioned for her a casket of gold with a clear crystal lid, that they might at least look upon her face. 

 

Years passed, and the Queen grew old. The joy in her life had long since died, along with the little girl she had loved as her own.   
And in the newly peaceful kingdom to the south, a second son of the king heard a tale from a traveler out of the east… The tale of a beautiful maiden in a crystal casket.


End file.
